FK Lowry Piling on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile!

21 Oct 2015

FK Lowry Piling recently completed a £270,000 Piling Project for McAleer & Rushe on the famous Royal Mile in central Edinburgh. The works by FK Lowry Piling, which was part of a £19 Million Hotel project, consisted of design and installation of Bearing Piles and a Contiguous Bored Pile Retaining Wall consisting of 154 No. 600mm Diameter CFA & 136 No. Rotary Bored Piles using their range of 70t high torque Soilmec Piling Rigs. The ground conditions consisted of up to 5m of Made Ground/Fill, this was underlain with Weathered Siltstone and Mudstone Bedrock at depth.

The six-storey 146-bedroom hotel, which will have frontages onto both the Royal Mile and the Canongate, will be built behind an existing facade facing onto the Royal Mile. To the rear, the hotel will link with a proposed new public square and pedestrian walkway which will be central to the wider £150 million redevelopment. Works on the hotel began in Summer 2015 and it is set to be completed by October 2016.

“We provided the Client with a technical solution that would utilise both CFA & Rotary Bored piling. In areas where we were unable to achieve the necessary penetration into the underlying bedrock, Rotary Bored Piling would be used. However, with the use of our high torque rigs, we were able to penetrate into the bedrock and achieve our minimum rock socket length. We were able to prove our design through a series of static load tests on the project. The use of CFA Piles being installed with our 70t Rigs proved extremely successful and we were able to deliver the project almost 2 weeks ahead of programme.”